"Development in Africa: What is the Cutting Edge in Thinking and Policy"

In the reading the authors have a discussion in length. Each other argues or discusses the development in Africa. Cheru argues that the development in Africa never started. This is because more developed theories being based on earlier European capitalist and their development experience. Tripp focuses on the post-Cold war development and human rights discourse as she states a “rights-based approach that stresses economic, social, and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights.” James Mittelman holds that the Washing Consensus is now discredited and identifies six strategic points of engagement that can be used to promote home-grown solutions to developmental issues based on locally-produced knowledge (Schmidt & Mittelman 274).
Cheru argue the development in Africa as it never happened. Cheru talks about the post-independence development model and how the model resembled the colonial development which stifled peasant independence and production. Due to this the number of peasants and their communities to initiate development autonomously was limited a lot. He argues that this means they will have to go back to the basics and review the final project. The reading states that the project failed due to it being threatened within the continent and the outside. The reading stated Africa’s current position in the global hierarchy provides us with a “compelling occasion to set in motion a transformative and emancipator national project that will create the necessary policy space” (Cheru 277). It also states that the new projects will a more equitable appropriation of the forces at the local and continental levels.
Tripp talks about the RBAs (rights-based approaches). This took place at the end of the Cold War. Witch brought two strands of civil, and political rights, and of economic, social, and cultural rights pertaining to food, water, health, education, housing, and employment (Tripp 279). The new approaches were to show a combination of international development and human rights concerns. This bring liberal together to think about Africans economic and social issues.
Both authors brought a good attention to the issues with Africa development anf the issues still coming forth. When Cheru argued about that the development in Africa never started I agree with him. I personally think in this reading and all the other readings we have read that Africa hasn’t really started to develop. I believe that in some ways they are not trying as hard as they can to start developing. I also believe that Africa may be overwhelmed that they don’t know what to do to get it started. They have so much going on that they don’t have it organized to get started on the development. When Tripp talks about the RBAs he provides a lot of information about the history then what it really is doing for Africa. Overall I believe that Cheru does the best about providing information about the development of Africa.